New Year greetings to Vietnamese in the Netherlands on the occasion of Spring 2021

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Vietnamese Ambassador to the Netherlands Pham Viet Anh sent his New Year greetings to the entire Vietnamese community.

Every year on the occasion of the Lunar New Year, the Vietnamese community in the Netherlands organises cultural exchange activities with the aim of preserving the national cultural identity, as well as helping the younger generation learn more about their origins.

However, on the occasion of the 2021 Lunar New Year, activities were not organised as usual so as to ensure the safety of the community from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, the Vietnamese Embassy and Vietnamese Student Association in the Netherlands organized an online talkshow for Vietnamese who are studying, working and living in the country.

On this occasion, Ambassador Pham Viet Anh sent his New Year greetings to the entire Vietnamese community and international students in the Netherlands, wishing everyone a warm and happy Lunar New Year Festival (Tet).

The Ambassador also presented a certificate of merit to the Vietnamese Student Association in the Netherlands for its positive contributions in 2020, advised and conveyed more new tasks and expectations to the students in 2021.

The event was held online and widely broadcast on a number of social networks such as Facebook, Youtube on February 13 to ensure the strict social gap regulations of the locality amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ambassador Pham Viet Anh hands over a certificate of merit to the Vietnamese Student Association in the Netherlands for its positive contributions in 2020.

In this particularly complicated epidemic situation this year, when at home, millions of people are gathered together to celebrate Tet with their families, relatives and friends, there are still many international students and Vietnamese cannot return to welcome Tet. The talkshow is an opportunity for many generations of Vietnamese far from home to sit down and share the truest and most sacred feelings towards their homeland and family about the Vietnamese traditional Lunar New Year holiday.

As of February 9, the Netherlands had confirmed more than 1 million cases of COVID-19 and 14,412 deaths.

The Dutch government has scrambled to keep a curfew after a court struck it down.

It is the first curfew in the country since World War II and provoked mass protests. It came into force on January 23 over concerns over the spread of the more transmissible UK variant. It was meant to expire on February 9 but the Dutch government announced last week that it was extended until March 3.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte maintained that the curfew was needed to prevent a surge in infections of the now dominant and more infectious British variant of the virus in the Netherlands.

"I want to ask everyone in the country to keep to the curfew," he said in reaction to the decision. "The good news is that the curfew will remain in place. It's of importance because we're facing the rise of the English virus. We're very worried about it."

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